Have you ever thought of partaking in the Cambridge English Certificate Testing that our school provides every year? Admittedly, it may sound frightening at the first instance but from personal experience, it definitely is worthwhile participating in it.

Before going in for the testing, however, there were some practical steps my classmates and I had to take. I attended both Proficiency in English courses in 7th and 8th form. These courses were an outstanding additional help to the regular English classes we have, because they gave us a much broader and deeper insight into advanced English. We worked with books specially designed for every part that was included in the exam. Besides all the studying we genuinely enjoyed learning the language even more because of the warm and peaceful atmosphere between us students and our teacher Miss Cencic. Shortly before the examination day we intensified our preparation in areas like Language in Usage, Reading and Writing.

When the day of the exam had arrived, which was on Saturday, March 24th, a friend of mine and I headed to the “Wirtschaftskammer” where the testing took place. There we met other candidates from our group and many other people. My personal first impression was the variety of ages I could see among the crowd. There were many who seemed to be much older than I was, which made me feel even prouder to be part of the testing at a young age.

Firstly, our test instructor explained the setup of the testing. We would start with Language in Use and Reading, then continue with Writing two texts, followed by the Listening in the morning and then finishing off with the Speaking Activity in the late afternoon. The first part, including all the written formats, started at around 9 am and ended at 12 pm approximately.

I have to say that I particularly liked the setup of the various parts of the testing because the areas that required most of my concentration span were in the beginning, which helped me a lot. It surely was on a more demanding difficulty level than in school but still: I managed to do my best!

All in all, the Speaking Activity was my favourite part of the testing since we could finally express our English skills and put them into practical use. It was a Paired Activity, similar to our final oral testing, where we had to describe and compare several pictures and additionally discuss issues related to them.

Although I am still waiting for my end results, which will hopefully turn out as I expect them to, I want to highlight what a privilege it is to take part in the CAE exam. To some extent the process is challenging but altogether the experience was beneficial and useful since it also was a preparation for the final oral exam in June. Therefore, if you have the chance, use it, because you surely won’t regret it!